Just a few observations for those who are interested in getting "into"
classical music.
First off, collections and anthologies of multiple artists are great places
to start. For every Moonlight Sonata Beethoven wrote, there were 27 pieces of
crap they will stick on every "Beethoven's Greatest Hits" that you have to sit
through to get to the piece you like. I've been impressed with the Mad
About... and the RCA-Victor 60+ Greatest Hits series, and the
Heavy Classix discs. The Classical Music for Dummies series are
supposed to be good, too. Ignore the fact that they'll have goofy titles like,
"Music from Old Cartoons." Also, I've found the Hooked on Classics
discs, as cheesy as they are, as a good introduction. You'll get exposed to
the best bits and pieces of twenty composers in an hour. Just hide them when
you're done listening.
Soundtracks to films about composers or classical music are good bets, because
they are recorded with excellent quality, and are geared for people who don't
like classical music. Check out the soundtracks for "Shine" (piano music),
"Immortal Beloved" (Beethoven) and "Amadeus" (Mozart). And pick up a CD of
Disney's Fantasia. Find out what you like on these, buy real CDs with the same
music, then tell people the soundtracks belong to your uncultured wife.
Unless it is really weird music, anything written after 1850 is considered by
the Classical Music Snobs to be trash, so be aware when you mention modern
composers in cultured company. Copland and Gershwin wrote fantastic stuff, but
it is for 'commoners'. Bela Bartok also wrote really awesome stuff, but unless
you are into progressive heavy metal, you probably won't like it. In fact,
almost no one likes it, so the snobs think it is great.
Be very careful about
avant-garde composers and performers. The Kronos Quartet has done some
phenomenal renditions (their cover of Purple Haze is breathtaking), but they
have a penchant for choosing some really screwed up, almost unlistenable stuff.
I think they drop acid.
A couple of observations about choosing recordings. In a contest, the Telarc
CD always wins. They are all recorded direct to digital with digital mics to
20-bit digital masters, and they go to ridiculous extremes to have the best
sound, the best performances, and the best liner notes.
If you can't find the Telarc copy of something, you're usually still okay. For
solo or chamber work, choose by the performer. For example, David Helfgott,
while having an inspiring story, is not a first-rate classical pianist. Van
Cliburn was. For orchestral work, look for a good conductor. Screw the snobs
here. The Boston Pops under John Williams, and the Cincinnati Pops under Eric
Kunzel, and Sir Neville Mariner with St. Martin in the Fields (see the Amadeus
soundtrack) are fantastic. For vocal music, John Rutter and the Cambridge
singers are top-notch.
With orchestral work, it is the conductor and the recording that make the
performance great, rather than the orchestra. When you've got 20 violinists
playing the same thing, it really doesn't matter who they are.
All that aside, here are my picks and pans:
- I like darker, more powerful stuff, and anything by Bach rules. Taccato
and Fugue in D minor, The Well-tempered Clavier, Goldberg
Variations. Bach was a deity on the keyboard. Air on a G String,
his orchestral suite for exotic dancers, is also enjoyable, and Jesu, Joy of
Man's Desiring makes you sit back in awe.
- Copland's (beware of snobs) Appalachian Spring and Fanfare for
the Common Man are good, and very enjoyable. His other stuff, like
Billy the Kid and Rodeo are so-so. Emerson, Lake, and Palmer did
a lot of rock 'n roll interpretations of Copland.
- Mozart is a mixed bag unless you like opera (which I do). Don
Giovanni, Marriage of Figaro, Cosi fan Tuti. Mozart's
Requiem rules. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik is also very good.
- Beethoven, well, was there. Most of his stuff is pretty simple, a decent
sense of rhythm, and you can dance to it. I'd give a 74, Danny.
- Wagner, gotta have Wagner. If you like opera, start buying the Ring
Cycle one at a time (Das Rheingold, Die Walkure,
Siegfried, and Gotterdammerung), then get Tannhauser,
The Flying Dutchman, Lohengrin and Tristan and Isolde. If
you don't like opera, get a "highlights of the Ring Cycle" disc, and maybe a
disc of orchestral Wagner (i.e., the music without the fat German ladies).
- Chopin (pronounced show-pan, in case you didn't know, which I didn't
until I was 22) was a mixed bag. Most of his nocturnes and
etudes are good, but some of them remind me of fancy guitar solos...
technically precise, with no musical merit.
- Bizet's Carmen is one of my favorites. It's an Italian opera about
Spaniards written by a Frenchman, and the music is great. Again, if the fat
German ladies bother you, it is also available in an orchestral version.
- Gershwin's American in Paris and Rhapsody in Blue are
fantastic, but get used in too many commercials.
- Gustav Holst's The Planets is a must-have. The Boston Pops
recording is probably my favorite standard performance, though Isao Tomita's
moog-driven ambient electronica interpretation is one of my top-ten CDs of all
time.
- Saint-Saen's only real standout was Carnival of Animals. Not
exactly your peaceful, tea and crumpets type of piece, but one of those you
flail your arms about, conducting the orchestra yourself.
- Philip Glass is a contemporary minimalist, and I really enjoy his stuff,
but sometimes it gets a little monotonous. He is very hip with the 'in' crowd.
I was told he once gave the commencement address at Lawrence University, and
his speech consisted of two words, said very slowly and deliberately: "just
create." Which would be appropriate for him. His Solo Piano is eerie,
somehow soothing and unsettling at the same time. Koyaanisqqatsi
(pronounced koy-on-iss-kot-see, it's a
Hopi Indian word) was a soundtrack he did for a dialogue-less art-film of
Coppala's, and is excellent. And he also did the score for Kundun,
Scorsese's recent Dali Lama biopic. Glass' choral work is a little weird for
me, but I'm warming up to it.
- Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition and Night on Bald
Mountain are very good, you usually can find both of those on a single
disc. Sometimes Bald Mountain is translated Bare Mountain.
- Vivaldi's Four Seasons seems to be a perennial favorite, but I find
it darn boring. In fact, a find a lot of that flowery violin crap to be
annoying. Almost anything that would fit as background music for Ordinary
People grates on my nerves.
- Pucinni - La Boheme and Madam Butterfly. Operas. Good
stuff. Typically fat Italian ladies, though.
- For a Russian homosexual, Tchaikovsky did some nice stuff. The 1812
Overture, while over-used, is a really nice piece. His Piano Concerto
#1 is grand. Romeo and Juliet, The Nutcracker (no gay jokes,
please), and Symphony #6 are also classical classics.
- In the realm of one-hit wonders, Prokiev's Peter and the Wolf is
fun, as is Grieg's Peer Gynt Suite.
- I highly recommend Carl Orff's Carmina Burana if you like powerful
choral pieces. You will instantly recognize Oh Fortuna (the opening and
closing piece) from tons of movie trailers. I think the whole piece is about
pagan Sun-worship.
- On the Strauss front, there is Johann and Richard (pronounced
reek-hard, in the German), who are not related. Johann
wrote waltzes like The Blue Danube. They irritate me. Richard wrote
Also sprach Zarathustra (theme from 2001) and Elektra.
Very good. In fact, Stanley Kubrik has put some decent classical music in a
couple of his movies, though I find it interesting it was the psycho in
Clockwork Orange who like Beethoven.
- Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique and Requiem are impressive,
and as dark as their names suggest.
- Handel annoys me. Water Music and Fireworks Music. What
sort of names are those? He's like the James A. Michener of English classical
music; too much music that was too long.
- Rossini had several good pieces. Guillaume Tell is really good, even
if the overture was used for The Lone Ranger. I liked The Barber of
Seville, [standard opera caveat applies].
- I also really like Liszt's Mephisto Waltz and Hungarian
Rhapsodys (there were several). The hard part is getting over the Bugs
Bunny syndrome. Warner Brothers used Liszt as background music for a lot of
slapstick cartoon sequences. If you can get the image of Elmer Fudd chasing
Bugs out of your mind while listening to it, you can really enjoy them.
- And if you get tired the serious, somber world of snobby classical music,
definitely check out PDQ Bach, the Weird Al of classical music. My favorites
of his are: A Little Nightmare Music: yet another opera about the night Mozart
died and Sollieri didn't; 1712 Overture and other Musical Assaults: 1712 is one
of the greatest musical parodies of all time, and Einstein on the Fritz
lampoons the previously-mentioned Philip Glass; The Intimate PDQ Bach:
includes the classic Hansel and Grettel and Ted and Alice, an operetta about a
transvestite monk, and Toot Suite, for calliope four-hands; Oedipus Tex:
has Classical Rap on it, probably the only work in the history of mankind
to scratch The Four Seasons on a turntable. The PDQ Bach stuff is of varying
quality. Some of his stuff is performance comedy, so listening to him use a
lasso or cardboard tubes as instruments isn't nearly as funny as seeing it.
But some of his lyrics are hilarious, and if you get to know the eccentricities
of some of the composers, the music is hilarious.
